The Rabbit Catcher and the Bird
by fhobos
Summary: "We'll laugh about this someday," Dick says, blithely, naively, not knowing how it will become the theme of their lives - the Team's, and especially Artemis and his, life. Character studies, side Spitfire, Supermartian, eventual Traught ahoy!
1. It begins with four words, 2010

**Standard Disclaimer:** I do hereby disclaim all rights and responsibilities for the characters in this story; those are reserved for Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti. I am only playing around in their universe.

**A/N:** I shouldn't be doing this. Erm, my hand slipped? Story cover credit goes to zoetekohana on Tumblr.

_**Edit on 8.21.2012:** _Switched to past tense.

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**THE RABBIT CATCHER AND THE BIRD**

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**ONE**

_It begins with four words_

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**August 9, 2010**

The supercomputer's screen cast pale blue shadows over Robin's face. His curiosity flared with each new image: grinning, Cheshire-cat masks, sais, the League of Shadows and in capital letters, ACTIVE; Sportsmaster's thick-jowled face, straw-colored hair, a cruel body that was more muscle than man, paternal contempt evident in the man's eyes, ACTIVE as well; and finally, a woman with striped cheekbones, once lithe and strong, now RETIRED and wheel-chair bound_. _

Robin leaned back against the chair, letting out the breath he didn't know he had been holding. He closed his eyes and remembered the arrow that had saved Wally from being crushed in Amazo's hand, the souvenir now propped on a stand in the speedster's room. He had made an understandable mistake in assuming Green Arrow but he should've checked just in case, because Artemis's arrowhead - -

("You were following us. _Babysitting_," he accused. "You still don't trust us."

Batman, Bruce Wayne, guardian, or was it father, the costumes changed so quickly Dick had trouble following, said simply, "We didn't follow you."

Green Arrow took an arrow from his quiver and held the two up for Robin's inspection: the one was diamond-shaped with a smooth-edged arrowhead, while the other)

- - had two serrated edges, designed to sink into prey so it would bleed to death, and tear at flesh if pulled out. Definitely not Green Arrow's or Speedy-Red Arrow's. He should've known the difference: not a crime-fighter's but a hunter's arrow.

Which begged the question: why did Batman allow her on the Team? Perhaps he aimed to utilize her connections to the League of Shadows; or perhaps he aimed to save her from the villain path… but a girl with trailing shadows was up for suspicion. Robin looked at the picture of Artemis Crock on the screen and it was as if her eyes challenged him, there and then, _who are you to judge me? _

"I'm not," he said, voice bouncing off the cave walls. He would be the last person to do such a thing.

He wondered how she felt when she had learned that her father was a villain, how she had dealt with the days alone with her mother locked in a cell, how she had felt when her sister walked out, how she had felt when her mother finally returned home, an invalid and in need of a thirteen-year-old-girl's care - -

Robin closed her files.

He has done this a thousand times, pulling histories by curiosity's whim, browsing through pages and pages of lives, but it was the first time he felt like a voyeur. He shouldn't be doing this, not without her permission - -

(_Batman does it all the time, _he reasoned, and then, immediately following, was another voice, his own voice, _But you're not Batman._)

The clock struck midnight; time to go and Robin left the Cave after wiping evidence of his ever being there. He has learned from the best, after all.

Dick pulled the covers over himself and slept. Two months from now would be the first day of his ninth grade career at Gotham Academy. It would also be Artemis's first day, too, if she accepted Bruce Wayne's offer.

He dreamed of swinging lockers, streams of algorithms, and somewhere in there, a girl fighting her genetics.

He woke up the next morning unable to recall who had won.

. . .

**September 22, 2010**

The six AM alarm whisked Artemis away but when she woke up she was staring at Jade's poster and she was back in Wonderland. It was a slow burn, this routine: wake up, poster, torture herself with memories. She has come to associate Jade's abandonment with mornings when it really happened at nighttime, under the cover of darkness and the sliver of crescent moonlight.

"Artemis, get up!" her mother called from the door. "I don't want you late for your first day of school."

She wheeled away, the _creaks _and _creaks _of her wheelchair trailing behind like a tattered cape of sound.

Artemis mentally noted to check the tire pressure and tighten the bolts as she groaned and cocooned herself back under the purple bedcovers.

. . .

Tugging the hem of her mandatory Gotham Academy skirt would never make it longer, but Artemis was stubborn if nothing else. She had to keep herself busy somehow; the starched white collar felt stiff against her neck and she had already loosened the wine-colored tie. Even her hair felt like it had been tied too tightly. The Academy insignia at the left breast of the jacket made her feel branded, owned, _stop it right now._

She reminded herself of the desperate hope with which her mother had said, _"A chance I never had," _and it momentarily halted her finicky fingers.

"Artemis?"

A girl approached, smiling in greeting. "I'm Bette, your student liaison. Welcome to Gotham Academy."

"Thanks, um, I'm Artemis," she said. There were no student liaisons at Gotham North. "But you… knew that."

She was saved from embarrassment when a hand lighted upon her shoulder. Pale face, slick dark hair, shining blue eyes and a familiar-unfamiliar voice poked her memory:

"We'll laugh about this someday," and he sounded so self-assured that her first instinct was to believe him.

There was a flash of light and a click of success that informed her that her slack-jawed expression was now permanently resting in some twerp's memory card. She blinked stars away, turned, but he was gone. She would think he didn't exist if not for the still-warm part of her shoulder where he had held her.

"Who's that?"

"A freshman," Bette supplied. Something in her tone spoke of previous history, like she has said that so many times that it has lost its novelty. "Ignore him," was her suggestion, and Artemis took it.

Under the arches a few feet away, Barbara Gordon watched them walk to class. Suspicion was conveyed through the crossing of her arms. "Dick? What was that about?" In the years that she'd known him, she'd never see him so forward with a stranger.

"Nothing, Barbara," he assured. "Just being friendly with the new girl."

He waited until Barbara rolled her eyes and started for class. Only then did he pull out his cell phone and smile, thinking that Gotham Academy just got a little more interesting.

. . .

At last, she'd shed her school uniform in favor of what she privately called her 'save the world' outfit. The snug boots, protective knee pads and spandex tight across her back secured her rising anticipation; she wondered what adventures the night held.

"Artemis?" the phone booth said. She nearly shrieked but managed to turn it into a gasp, preserving her dignity when Robin stepped out of the shadows (_darn Gotham and its many, many shadows_). For the second time today two shorties have caught her off guard. Either she was getting lazy or she had a predilection for them.

"How _random _that you're in Gotham City, instead of _Star City,_ where your _uncle _Green Arrow lives." His grin was the icing on the cake, deliberately knowing and unknowing, an '_I really don't know why but I'm pretending to know to fluster you' _grin_. _Or maybe she was reading into it too much when she should be thinking of a response.

"I'm, ah, here to see my cousin! She was in the state spelling bee." She congratulated herself; an excuse, however paper-thin, was better than none. "Here. In Gotham," she added. "City."

She wanted to smack herself.

His grin widened and he spelled, "C-O-O-L. Did she W-I-N?"

She wanted to smack him. Artemis narrowed her eyes. "N-O."

"D-R-A-G." He lifted a brow in condolence.

"Yeah, let's just go to the Cave." She jerked a thumb at the OUT OF ORDER sign.

Robin leaned forward in a half-bow, arms lifted in deference. "Ladies first."

"Your town. You go," she said, hands placed at the hips in a non-negotiable stance.

Robin shrugged, _if you insist, _and stepped into the phone booth. The computerized voice chimed, _"Recognized: Robin B-Zero-One" _and he was consumed by light. She followed shortly after, expecting the faces of her new teammates - -

Artemis dove away from a ball of fire so hot she felt her skin was scalding even when she had dodged. Her heart kicked into overdrive as adrenaline shot through her body and to her fingertips, there was thick smoke rolling all around, where was Robin? - -

"Get down!"

He landed beside her and flung batarangs into the mass of smoke, hitting metal, judging by the sound.

"Who are we fighting?" Artemis shouted over the din of fire.

"Don't know, but we're sitting ducks by these tubes." He broke off into a dash. "Head for the exit - - "

Walls of water raced at them from the end.

" - - Or not," Robin finished.

. . .

No response from the Team via comlink or telepathy. Artemis's heartbeat rose in tandem with her panic as they sprinted into the Cave living room.

"We need to get lost," Robin said.

_Could they be… no, no, no… _

Her father's voice sliced through her fear, drowned it out with his rough, overwhelming persona, _"Never allow yourself to be trapped. Become familiar with the usual exits: windows, air vents, thin foundations, thin walls, water ways - - "_

"The air vent!" She darted forward, not needing to be told twice by Robin's "Good, go!"

. . .

They dropped onto the metal walkway of the basement. Robin glanced at his glove computer every few seconds to ascertain their location.

"This way," he said, but the one guiding Artemis was her father.

"_Your greatest foe isn't your enemy, but your fear. It's only one tool in your arsenal so keep it clamped down and out of the way." _

They ran around the large iron machines, the steam spat from overheating pipes, and the fire balls threatening to scorch them alive. Ducking behind a generator, Robin paused to consult the downloaded Cave blueprints, muttering, "I know that access tunnel is here somewhere…"

"_You have a good pair of eyes on you. Don't neglect what may be right in front of you." _

"You mean this one?" Artemis said, jumping down, triumphant at having found it, feeling like Alice chasing the White Rabbit until she landed on reality and beggan to crawl through the tunnel.

. . .

"There's a secret passage behind one of these bookcases," Robin explained.

"Seriously?" Artemis said, her sarcasm wiggling through her father's mask. "Cliché much?"

"You should see the Bat Cave," he said.

His grin vanished at the sound of metal on metal. They pressed against an aisle of bookshelves, batarangs and arrows at the ready.

The footfalls grew louder.

"Artemis," called a robotic voice, comforting in its lack of emotion. "Robin."

Her father's words dissipated like vapors and her anxiety twisted away, replaced by a flood of relief. "It's Red Tornado!" she said, rushing out, smiling, thanking - -

- - eyes widening at the Not-Red-Tornado's hand reaching for her - -

- - the wind was knocked out of her lungs as Robin barreled them away, shouting, "Yes on the Red, no on the Tornado!"

The Red Tornado lookalike had failed to grab her but it hadn't failed to take her bit of hope.

. . .

"Did you know that Red Tornado had - - siblings?" Artemis asked between heaving breaths, not even caring about the shrill quality her voice took when she was stretched to the point of snapping.

"No," Robin said, footsteps beating a steady rhythm in the corridor.

Something in his calm answer caused her to grip his wrist just as he was about to turn left. He looked at her.

"So now what?"

He wasn't glaring at her for stopping him when they should be running for their lives so she licked her lips and continued, clutching at scraps of fleeting logic. "Red Tornado is one of the powerhouses of the League. How are we supposed to take out _two _of him?"

"They do seem pretty user _un_friendly," he said, the white of one eye mask enlarging, indicating a raised eyebrow.

"Don't joke," she bit out, angry at his easy response, angry at herself for needing his composure in the first place. "They - - "

"_Attention, Robin. Attention, Artemis. You have exactly ten minutes to surrender. Or the lives of your teammates will be extinguished." _

They exchanged tense looks.

. . .

"We can access the hangar from here," Robin said as they ran through the halls.

The foreboding roar made them turn; at the sight of the incoming deluge, they ground to a halt.

"Or not," he amended.

"Will you _please stop saying that?" _Artemis shouted before they were swallowed by the wave, tumbling like debris in the ocean.

The cold water almost shocked her into opening her mouth and releasing precious oxygen. Artemis shut her eyes and reopened them when she felt a warm hand grip her, tugging her forward, the start of an awkward embrace if they had been on land. The rebreather pressed to her mouth tasted like air surrounding lofty mountaintops, or watermelons, or summer, whatever that tasted like; later, when she was lying in bed, awestruck at her own breathing, she would remember this as the taste of Robin, unsure whether it had been real or her own imagined interpretation of him: soaring high and free, grinning from ear to ear.

Then red, metal fingers closed around her ankle, pulling her back. She opened her mouth in a watery scream, rebreather lost. The heavy veil of her father slipped over her and Artemis gritted her teeth and mashed fists on her captor's plated head to break free.

Robin stabbed it in the eye with her arrow and the fake Red Tornado released her. Robin scooped her up with an arm and grappled to the surface.

. . .

They were cornered on both sides of the stairs, the futile attempts at distraction of Kid Flash and Superboy echoing behind them. Artemis notched her bow, aimed at the female Red Tornado.

"I'm almost out of arrows," she said.

"Distract her, now!"

His words galvanized her into action. Artemis shot an exploding arrow while Robin flung batarangs as if they've rehearsed it. It was natural, this dual partnership they were forced to commit to for their survival, like they were two puzzle pieces who've just found each other and were locking into place. They dove off the stairs and seamlessly slipped into the water, a pair of seals.

. . .

They dragged themselves up the ladder and into the pipe tunnel, gulping air like they've never tasted anything so wonderful before. There were echoes, the quiet drip of water from their clothes, their heaving shoulders, the _thumpthumpthump _of their hearts thrashing against ribcage.

Immediately and on instinct, Robin began lowering his heart rate. _Draw deep from the stomach, hold for three seconds, and exhale through the nose. Dispel negative emotions and find the center… _

Both heads lifted at the toneless countdown: _"Six minutes."_

"What do we do now?" Artemis asked. Her calm had long slipped from her fingers; she looked to him now, scrabbling to catch even a bit of his natural composure.

Robin furrowed his brows. "We save them. That's how it works."

His answer didn't reassure her in the least for she said, panic-stricken, "Maybe that's how it's supposed to work, but those robots already took out our four, _super-powered_ friends!"

_Ah, _he thought as he noted the ember still burning - - though dimly - - in Artemis's eyes.

"You seem distraught," he observed, a statement that pushed her over the edge with its matter-of-fact delivery.

"_Distraught?_" she cried, eyes widening and mouth agape. "M'gann is _dying!_ We have _no_ powers and I'm down to _my last arrow_." She pulled it out. "_Of course I'm distraught!_"

"_Well, get _traught - - _" _Robin said. _"Or get _dead_._"

The hand that gripped the arrow faltered at the ferocity of his order. "How can you _be_ so calm?"

The strange mix of bewilderment and unadulterated _need _caused him to pause. He thought back to her file, of the 'tests' she was subjected to by her father, and again wondered how she coped with it all if she couldn't keep calm under pressure and he answered his own question, _Maybe her tests never required her to carry the fate of lives, maybe her tests only required her to take them. _She had been trained by Sportsmaster from a young age, though not quite as long as Robin was, and he had been privately gauging her capabilities, distinguishing their similarities and dissimilarities ever since opening her file…

He withdrew from his mind. She was peering at him, face open like a fresh page, waiting to be written.

"Practice," Robin said, starting to crawl through the pipe. "Been doing this since I was nine."

The muted sound of hands and knees on metal followed.

"What good is that now? What chance do we have against unrelenting machines?"

Robin stopped and replayed.

"Oh, _duh!_ They're _machines_. And one electromagnetic pulse will shut down any machine within range," he explained, mind quickly working through the logistics. He saw her grabbing onto his words, letting her regain solid ground and muster hope.

"Great," she enthused. Then the smile dropped as she pinned him with a pointed look. "Except you'd better have an EMP emitter in your utility belt because I know I don't have one in my quiver."

He smiled at the return of her spirit and at the fact that she knew what an EMP emitter was.

"I'm fresh out," he said, and she didn't glare at him this time.

He pressed two fingers to his earpiece. "But I'm betting we can make one. What do you say, KF? Doable?"

"_Totally doable," _Kid Flash affirmed.

. . .

"Robin, watch out!"

Her warning was too late, her last arrow was too late.

She clambered back into the pipes, flames, shame and despair licking at her feet. She peered through the cracked opening and was chilled to her core at the sight of Robin encased in the pillar of water.

"No," she whispered, hugging her knees to her chest.

She had wanted to do so much with her teammates but it was over before it even began. She had failed and their deaths would hang on her - -

(Beneath the prickly resentment, fear and disgust, she had regarded her father with a kind of awe because she had wondered how he could stand so tall and straight despite the weight of countless deaths. Was it _because of_ those stolen lives that he could stand so proudly, or did they even matter? In her heart of hearts she knew she didn't have it in her to be like him.)

- - "No, no, no," she repeated, warding everything like she was chasing away nightmares. It hadn't worked when her mother was arrested, it hadn't worked when her father came, it hadn't worked when her sister left, and it wasn't working now.

. . .

"If I surrender, I die with the others," Artemis said, testing out the options in a soft voice lest they become real.

She began to crawl.

"But if I find a way out… out of the Cave, out of the mountain, I can get help. Call in the League."

She misplaced a hand and slipped forward, screaming. Gravity and fate saw through her laughable attempts at reassurance and deposited her in front of the souvenir shelves.

Her shoulder smarted from the landing, but more than that, her sense of self-worth and pride were bruised. She was a child again, sitting in a bedroom full of memories of desertion and loathing.

"Who am I kidding?" Artemis said to the walls.

Her bare and naked vulnerabilities were displayed for all but no one was there to see. The _'I' _slipped off her tongue as easily as the lies she told everyone but most of all, she had lied to herself and the truth was this: she wanted so much to be a hero that she playacted the part, had pulled on the mask and worn it for so long that she forgot it wasn't her face. She believed it could bring out the hero in her but how could it bring out someone she never was?

"Best I can do is hide. Hope the League finds me before the Reds," she said to the air, to herself. She walked up to the shelves until she was eye level with the Cheshire mask of her sister.

"I know _you_ understand."

("Dad will come after you," Artemis said, clutching her teddy bear. She didn't have the finesse to deliver a threat.

"Let him. I'll disappear like the Cheshire Cat." Jade shouldered her bag and strode out of her life with one pearl of advice: "In this family, it's every girl for herself.")

Doors slammed and her father's instructions rang in her ears but one voice, boyish and almost always flirting with levity, cleaved through the fog of her doubts.

_Well, get traught or get dead. _

She lifted the Cheshire mask from its stand.

"That might've been true about our family," Artemis said and it didn't pain her to admit it. "But I've found a new family and here, we're all for one and - -"

"_One minute." _

The sight of her first arrow shot for the team shifted something in her. She gripped the shaft and slid it into her quiver.

Artemis had saved a life with that arrow and she would do it again.

. . .

"I surrender. Stop the clock."

Only seconds after she had uttered the words and she was soaring in the air in a somersault that pulled her muscles and electrified her to the core. Artemis poured her will into the arrow and let it fly.

The world tipped, turned, exploded—

—she was _Artemis, _named after the Goddess of the Hunt—

—and blue currents cascaded outward, making her skin tingle with more than elation as the Reds dropped like puppets whose strings have been cut.

She had won.

She was the last one standing.

Her celebration was tempered by realization.

Artemis scrambled to the fallen Boy Wonder, bow clattering to the ground in her haste.

He wasn't moving.

_You said get traught or get dead; I got traught so please, you can't…_

Her hands hovered to him, lay carefully over his chest and his forehead. It wasn't a conscious action, this touching, and beneath the wet suit and the plastered hair he felt cool. She missed his warm hand that had pressed the rebreather to her lips, his unbreakable confidence that everything will turn out well like it was a fact and it was written in the stars and there was no other way events could transpire. She imagined she would never hear his joking, facetious observations or his creative lexemes and she faltered, forgot how to_ breathe_—

Robin coughed once, twice, a feeble sound that nonetheless brought her relief and air.

"He - - he's breathing, too," she said, astonished, loudly to the others but mainly to herself, that it was a reality that Robin was alive.

He turned his head to grin at her and said, "Way to get traught," like he'd always _known _she'd pull through in the end and he'd been waiting, that little troll.

But she would forgive him for that because those four words saved her more than once today and they worked like magic now, loosening the knot of anxiety and allowing her to collapse back, jelly-limbed, heart-trembling and sighing, wanting to laugh and cry because she and he and she and he were alive.


	2. Training for failure, 2010

**A/N:** I noticed that I'm slowly diverging from canon. As always, comments letting me know how you took the chapter is appreciated! And you might have noticed that I've changed the old summary; just testing out a new one and waiting to see if I like it…

This chapter's shorter than planned because I decided to cut the other half out for chapter three.

**_Edit on 8.21.2012:_ **Switched to past tense.

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**TWO**

_Training for failure_

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**September 23, 2010**

Artemis left the Main Office with a warm sheet of paper in hand, her updated schedule straight off the printer. She meandered through the long and wide corridors, occasionally glancing at the printout and comparing room numbers. She stopped at her destination and walked through the open door. Despite the pomp and austerity of Gotham Academy's outer visage, the classrooms did not appear all too different from non-private institutions.

_Well, minus the high-tech equipment, the pressed uniforms, and the students working out equations._

About half of the students were already present despite class not starting until ten minutes later, and half of those were preparing sleek computer tablets that cost more than her room. Steeling herself, she opted for a window seat and pulled out her modest notebook, pencils, and textbook frayed at the corners.

A hand tapped on Artemis's shoulder. She turned and there was a friendly grin - -

"Hi, I'm - - "

"The creep who took my picture!"

Several heads swiveled to their direction and Artemis sank minutely into her chair.

"I was in it, too," he added before sweeping his arms out in a theatric manner. "Dick Grayson, at your service. Middle name's Richard but everyone calls me Dick, Grayson, twerp, the Mathlete Prince, freshman, etcetera."

Artemis eyed his proffered hand before shaking it briefly.

"I'm - - "

"Artemis Crock, I know," he cut in. "You're a Wayne Scholarship student, who doesn't know you? So how'd you get in? Athletics?"

She squirmed in her chair. 'Who doesn't know you'? The attention was wholly unwanted, in her opinion.

"You must be some kind of academic genius," he was saying. "Were you at the American Invitational Mathematics Examination?" At her shake of the head, he asked, "USAMO? ARML? You seem oddly _familiar…_and I'd definitely remember a pretty girl like yourself."

"No, no, I don't think so."

"Oh?" He ran a finger down her schedule. "But it says here that you're taking Geometry Honors despite being a sophomore, Biology Honors, AP English Literature, U.S. History Honors…"

"How did you - -"

"…_and_ Advanced French." He let her snatch her schedule back. "_Est-ce que tu peux me suivre si je parle comme ça?"_(Can you keep up if I speak like this?)

Artemis scoffed and replied, "_Ben oui, je ne serais pas dans le cours si je ne pouvais pas."_ (Of course, I wouldn't be in the class if I couldn't.)

His eyes gathered all of the light in the room, making them appear bluer. He leaned forward with his arms on his desk. "What's your best subject? Worst?"

"English Literature," came the immediate response. "Math."

She didn't have time to think about why she answered, about why she was even having this conversation because the teacher strolled into class.

"Whaddya know," Dick Grayson said, eyes twinkling in private amusement. "Math is my best subject and English Literature is my worst. Maybe we can help each other out this year?"

"Sure," she said vaguely, turning around for roll call. She figured she wouldn't see much of him later.

. . .

"You _knew _we have this class together," Artemis said by way of greeting as she slipped into the seat behind the slicked head of Dick Grayson.

He turned from the window and snickered, a sound she was quickly and unconsciously beginning to associate with the boy. It was now irrevocably tied to him, and she chased away images of a boy cackling in the shadows as he hacked motion sensors because the thought of Dick as the Boy Wonder was an asinine notion and if she continued to think on it she would burst out in unladylike, knee-slapping laughter which would forever mark her as _that crazy transfer student. _

"Why, Artemis, are you following me? People will start getting ideas," Dick said in lilting, insinuating tones.

She rolled her eyes. "Yes - - that we share the same class. How logical of them."

The entrance of Professor Fortner - - Gotham Academy didn't have teachers, they had _professors_ - - prematurely ended their conversation. Dick smiled before facing forward as Fortner welcomed them all to "third period English and another year of perspicacious writing."

Artemis would be lying if she told herself that she wasn't a tad disappointed.

. . .

Lunchtime rolled in and Artemis rushed out of U.S. History to the cafeteria, breezing past students milling into the halls. The layout was spacious yet simple enough to navigate so she grabbed a tray of lunch within minutes: food that looked and smelled like food, brick oven pizza, blueberry and pine nut quinoa salad and - - her mouth watered - - a slice of apple pie that was oven-warm. She was recanting her initial reluctance at entering Gotham Academy as she made her way outside to the courtyard. After shaking her head at the classically-styled garden that included Doric columns, a central fountain, and lines of trim bushes, she sat at the fountain's edge, eating and musing about the Grecian statue holding a pot from which water issued forth.

She had never cared for the transfer student's first day rite of passage: the potentially-awkward task of finding a place to eat in the cafeteria. Until she found a small ring of friends in Gotham Academy, she was perfectly content lunching and listening to the streams of water.

The apple pie was as delicious as it smelled.

. . .

Sitting across from him, Barbara lowered her fork. "Who are you looking at?"

Dick turned away too late - - she followed his line of sight just as Artemis' blonde ponytail disappeared past the doors leading to the gardens.

"All right, spill: who's the new girl and why are you interested in her?" the red-head asked, tone brooking no room for any excuse that may come. She scrutinized him. "Hitting puberty?"

The cranberry juice he was drinking grazed the wrong pipe and he choked.

He continued to sputter longer than needed to paint himself serious. "She's on a Wayne Foundation Scholarship, Barbara. Of course I'm interested in the sole recipient… I mean, what if she's a math genius like me? It gets lonely at the top."

Barbara dug into her jello cup in a frustrated jab. He always did this, appearing to give an honest answer before sliding back to his flippant attitude. If it hadn't been for Batman and her father's shared history, she was sure she would have never believed that Dick was prowling the streets, keeping Gotham's streets clean as Robin.

Dick chuckled but his eyes strayed to the garden doors. He knew Bruce would tell him to play it safe and limit his interactions with Artemis at school.

But this was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

. . .

Artemis slammed her fists into the punching bag's sides, which coincidentally and infuriatingly shared the same red as the object she was pretending to fight.

The incident with Red Torpedo and Red Inferno was ripe in her mind, the frustration of her near-emotional collapse festering like a pus-filled wound at which she continued to pick. Sweat at her hairline flicked off with each ferocious kick or crawled down the back of her soaked shirt. She must've been at it for - - what, the past two hours or so? - - it didn't matter, there wasn't a mission for them today. Superboy and Miss Martian were out grocery-shopping (was taking the bioship really necessary?), Kaldur was daytripping to Atlantis, Kid Flash had some afterschool-fair-something-or-other (she hadn't pay attention), and Robin was - -

"Do you have a personal vendetta against punching bags?"

- - slinking around like a ninja and popping out whenever he chose, with such unnerving timing that she seriously believed he had a chip in his head that told him whenever someone was thinking about him. She should be used to it by now but her swing veered too far to the left and she had to inelegantly plant a foot down to prevent from falling face-first.

She scowled. "How _do _you do that?"

"Meditation," he suggested, sidestepping her query. "Deep breathing, maybe a hobby or two."

"What?"

"Alternative stress relievers to beating yourself against a punching bag." His gloved hand gestured at her bruising knuckles.

"Well, what do you expect?" she snapped, eyes flashing bitterly. He raised his palms in a placating manner and she wanted to retrieve her words but she has been a little stretched as of late: the stress of acclimating into a new school with new expectations, the shame of almost giving in to the little cajoling voice yesterday and abandoning her teammates with tail between legs, and yes, maybe she has being a touch oversensitive, but she was going to take his comment as a hint that she didn't have any hobbies aside from mauling inanimate objects.

"It's bigger. It's tougher. I'll get hurt no matter what."

She wasn't sure she was talking about the punching bag anymore. He fell silent and she realized that she hated it more than when he was filling the air with his dissected words. Artemis turned away to slow the spinning punching bag.

She heard him shuffling away and thought he would begin his personal warm-ups. Robin had developed a reputation for training solo in the Cave gym, not because he radiated _don't touch me _vibes like Conner, but because the flow of his acrobatic poses is unmatched and therefore intimidating. She didn't think she knew anyone who could unfurl their body after curling into a ball as smoothly as Robin could.

"Want to spar?"

She whirled around, searching for signs of pity, found him unreadable with his domino mask. Robin waited patiently, cape set aside, neatly folded on a bench.

"Come at me when you're ready," he said, lowering into a loose stance.

. . .

Robin had analyzed Artemis' weak points within minutes of their spar. Her strikes were a good combination of offensive and defensive maneuvers, hard and swift like Sportsmaster's, but a more gliding version, modified for a sleeker fighter like Artemis. He could see ghosts of Cheshire in her ducks and rolls, but whereas her older sister had her continuing stint in the League of Shadows to polish them, Artemis had not.

He caught the foot slicing down, pulled it and Artemis fell. She recovered quick enough to roll away and put distance between them.

Robin could see from the way she flowed from one move to the other that her education must have largely favored offensive and stealth strategies.

"Your defense is rough and easy to break through," he said.

_Like now!_

He took flight to avoid her mid-sweeping leg. As expected, she dashed forward, intending to deliver a blow where he landed, but Robin flipped away at the last second, a shade to the right. Artemis immediately jerked away but he sprung at her unexpectedly and used her momentum to push her to the ground with his knees.

The match ended, with him straddling her stomach without touching.

"And you have a habit of favoring your right arm for hooks and jabs," he finished, breath beginning to slow as the adrenaline spun away. "You might want to diversify your moves."

She stared at him for a few incredulous seconds before pushing him off. "Yeah, easy for _you _to say. You've got the Big Bats teaching you all you'd ever want to know. What was that, anyway?"

"Aikido. What about Green Arrow?" he asked, keeping his tone neutral.

She grabbed a towel from a rack and draped it over her face, muffling her voice. "Ah, he's - - he's pretty busy so we don't have a lot of time together."

"Why not ask anyone on the Team?"

Artemis made a small noise of agitation. "Kid Mouth's too fast - - and too annoying - - to train with, M'gann would hold back on me, Superboy's out of the question, and Kaldur…" She considered the option. "Maybe…"

Robin cleared his throat.

"You think Kaldur - - wait, you mean you?" she asked, her surprise increasing as Robin leisurely took a sip of his water. "Seriously? But…"

"But what?" He wiped his lips with a towel. "I'm the logical choice. We're both similar in stature, we're both non-metas - -" Blink and he would've missed her lip twitch. "And we made a good team. I don't have to remind you of yesterday's home front ambush, do I?" At her hesitation, he persisted with earnest. "I mean it, Artemis. We _make_ a good team. Present tense."

Artemis, a mirror of dripping sweat, loosened hair, blood-tinged cheeks and lips, wild, conflicted eyes - - it was almost like he was looking at himself in the past, when he was without a home or a mentor, a boat casting for land in an aimless sea. He was familiar with that, the desperate wish for something you thought you would never have.

Robin thought he could understand why Bruce Wayne and Batman allowed her on the Team.

"We make a 'good' team…" she repeated, confusing him with the small smirk pulling at her lips. "Or do we make an _asterous _team?"

Robin laughed and felt the ache in each and every muscle.

"We make an asterous team," he agreed.

. . .

**September 24-27, 2010**

Over the next few days, Artemis and Robin trained in the afternoons and talked during the day, with Artemis remaining unaware about the latter.

Their first official training session began with easy warm-ups until Artemis asked, "Are you going easy on me?" and demanded that he did not.

Robin acquiesced after realizing he has been unintentionally doing exactly that. To make up for it, he introduced her to the grueling regimen he himself was subjected to by Batman, and Artemis merely bit the bullet despite waking up the morning after to a numb body. She barely had time to shovel cereal down her throat, get dressed, and bid her mother farewell.

Artemis stumbled into first period one minute after the bell, clutching her math homework in one hand and adjusting her tie with the other.

Dick watched as she plopped herself into the desk before him, a tired "Hello" sighing from her lips.

Professor Stevens called for the homework to be passed to the front. When Dick handed her a sheaf of papers, she noticed the Robin's egg blue Post-It note tagged on, and the scrawled message: _You look tired. Rough night?_

Her muscles quiver just by recalling it. Professor Stevens returned the previous day's homework and when Artemis held the stack behind her, the note was posted over his grade: _Something like that. 'A-plus-plus'? Is that even possible?_

He responded: _Stevens gives extra points for legibility. Feel better._

Professor Stevens droningly lectured about complementary and supplementary angles.

She responded: _Thanks._

. . .

After falling prey to Robin's entering throw for the fifth time, Artemis huffed and said, "Teach me how you do it. Teach me aikido."

He didn't question her demand and launched into a comprehensive outline of the basic philosophy behind the martial art. She was itching to dive in but the need to interrupt waned as the explanation continued; Aikido was the "Way of combining forces" using the tactic of blending with an attacker's movements for the purpose of controlling their actions with minimal effort. Foremost was to understand the rhythm and intent of the attacker to find the optimal position and timing to apply a counter-technique.

"The aim is to unify, to combine, to reciprocate," Robin said.

These were strange concepts to her.

Artemis listened.

. . .

**September 28, 2010**

It was on their first mission since the Red Fiasco that she saw the budding fruits of her - - and Robin's - - labor.

The bio-ship's belly split, opening into an oval through which Artemis and Robin zipped down. Her stomach shifted as she free fell but the wind whipping around her body and through her hair, the suspense and speed of the dive, was thrilling.

The soft Indian earth rose to meet them and they touched down in mirrored crouches, whipped out their batarangs and arrows, and leapt into the jungle with only the hush of a cloud of dust.

Their easy, unconscious synchronicity made Artemis smile, made her momentarily forget the anger she was feeling at Kaldur. Her anxiety at having fallen under his suspicion was drowned out by the whistle of air, the animal sounds around her, the singing of her blood, and she thought nothing could touch her.

. . .

**October 10, 2010**

Black Canary turned her focus from Kaldur and M'gann's practice match to the two non-metas of the Team. She observed - - and noted with rising interest - - the seamless transitions from one pose to the next as Robin and Artemis traded punches for kicks and kicks for punches. Where Artemis pulled back, Robin pushed and where Artemis pushed, Robin pulled. They moved like water sliding around stones in a stream.

As the rare metahuman who was more selective in using her sonic screams, Black Canary had been especially concerned with Robin and Artemis' combat development. She knew Robin took after his mentor and was easily the most capable fighter in terms of hand-to-hand combat. But she was pleasantly surprised to discover that Artemis was able to keep up with him, even - -

Artemis let out a yell and hauled Robin over her shoulder. The throw had enough force to make Robin flip in the air once before tumbling onto his stomach, an audible _augh_ knocked out of his mouth.

"Nice moves," he said. The wince evened out into a smile. "Who taught you those?"

"Hmm," she mused slyly, helping him up. "I wonder?"

. . .

**October 16, 2010**

Wolf disintegrated into nothing more than a cloud of smoke and even that was dissipated by the cold reality of the wind.

Superboy rose to his feet. He brushed flakes of snow that he couldn't see because his shirt was as white as the landscape around them.

_Wolf, _M'gann said through their telepathic link, a single-worded eulogy.

"There was no indication of feedback." Robin consulted his wrist computer for evidence. "I'm sorry," he said, the way one would for forgetting to turn off the stove.

Superboy looked at the ground: chalk-white, blank like him. "Can't do anything for him now."

He resumed tearing off the alien ship's cannon and M'gann began rerouting systems to integrate the weapon into her ship's bio-matrix. The Team fended off two incoming enemy ships without further thought about Wolf: he was just a pet after all, and this was their first mistake.

"Got you covered, get inside!" Artemis loosed three exploding arrows and whipped around towards the bio-ship. "I'm almost there!"

She didn't see that one of her arrows had missed. She didn't realize that one of the cannons were heating up.

"Artemis, behind you - - "

And then she was simply swallowed by a blaze of light and the arctic wind stole her name from M'gann's lips:

"_Artemis!"_

The scream shattered the sky and burrowed into them like an invisible shard of glass. The name was lost to the unforgiving wasteland and so was the girl.

Kid Flash trembled. "They're _dead, _every - - single - - alien, if it's the _last thing I do." _His face was contorted with a murderous rage that no one questioned, not even when they were safely seated in the bio-ship, not even when he was brutalizing the panel of controls with blind fists.

They overlooked it as grief. This was their second mistake.

. . .

The next few hours passed like a slow moving dream, during which Robin became someone else. But he was so removed from his surroundings - - had been removed, ever since - -

(flash of light and the freezing wind and the scream that unmade and made them all)

- - that he was cleaved into halves: the one half retreating inward, watching and waiting, the other half spreading out and over like a cool balm, running, ordering, sending his teammates-slash-friends-slash-family over the brink. Robin no longer knew the distinction. They were nameless soldiers, chess pieces to be used, weapons to be wielded. He forgot the taste of the Martian's double-chocolate cookies, the jubilant crows of the Speedster's "_Souvenir!" _He forgot the twitch of the Superboy's lips as he learned a new human expression, the gentle confidence with which the Atlantean infused his words as he told him that "someday, you will take over as Team leader."

_There is an archer, too, _said his inner half. _A girl with storms for eyes._

_But who? _asked his outer half, with the deep dark rumble of a borrowed voice or a future voice such that the inner half was silent until his death. He woke up with a gasp raking out of his throat like he'd been drowning and the names _Kaldur-Conner-M'gann-Wally-ArtemisArtemisArtemis _clutched in his hands.

The simulation rippled away and they all woke up to their fear-sweat and disbelief, shaken, like a group of nervous, messed-up marionettes.

Like Artemis, Robin refused to look at anyone in the eye. Unlike Artemis, he was afraid of what he might find reflected back.

M'gann wept in Captain Marvel's arms.

.

.

.

**End notes: **The bit about aikido was gleaned from Wikipedia. When Artemis responds in French with "_Ben oui"_('of course')she's using colloquial speech, kind of like she's saying, 'duh'. The more formal 'of course' would be _"bien sûr"._


End file.
